VietNamNet Bridge – HCMC will soon develop 30 lakes in suburban areas and hundreds of others in inner-city areas to hold rainwater in a move to effectively control severe floods, the city flood control center has announced.

A HCMC road is flooded after heavy rains and flood tides.

Do Tan Long, head of the Irrigation Management Office of the HCMC Steering Center of the Urban Flood Control Program, told the Daily that the center is planning to send the city People’s Committee a project to build reservoirs to help cope with flooding in the city by the second quarter.

According to the project, 30 large lakes will be built on the outskirts while due to the lack of land, the areas in the inner-city will have smaller lakes located in residential areas, sidewalks, school campuses and large buildings.

With the ongoing climate change and the increasing rainfall, building lakes for holding water is a sound solution to deal with the overload of the drainage systems when heavy rain comes along with flood tides, causing floods in the city, Long said.

The city will use its budget to build large lakes and raise funds from residents for smaller ones, he said.

Ho Long Phi, senior advisor and project manager of the Steering Center of Flood Control of the city, said when the lakes are finished and put into use, they can store tens of millions of cubic meters of rainwater and help reduce floods by around 30%.

The proposal for building lakes to control floods in the city was passed by the city’s Party Committee three years ago but the project has yet to be carried out, Le Thanh Hai, secretary of the city’s Party Committee, told a Party meeting last week.

The city’s People Committee said for the last three years some big flooding control projects with a total investment of some VND1.58 trillion (US$74.8 million) have been commissioned.

They include the tide control sewer Nhieu Loc – Thi Nghe in Binh Thanh District, 335 kilometers of drainage systems and 1,077 sluice gates to control flood tides around the city.

Source: SGT